Some are trying to crowd-source data atop which technologists can build visualisations or apps, & for authorities this could be useful to set standards & regulationsNEW DELHI: When Narendra Modi declared last year before becoming prime minister that he would build "100 smart cities," Indians understood a part of what he said — "100." But the quest to comprehend the rest of his vision has not been fruitful, even though his government set up a website called SmartCities.gov.in, organized an exhibition called "Smart Cities India 2015" and held news conferences during which a minister used the word "retrofitting" several times. Finally, in June, through a "mission statement," PM Modi agreed that he did not know himself what a "smart city" was.

"There is no universally accepted definition of a smart city," the statement explained, even though Indians had not been waiting to learn the universal definition of a "smart city," but what PM Modi had meant by it.

A few days ago, the Modi government finalized a list of 98 cities, some or many of which would become beneficiaries of an annual federal grant of one billion rupees, or about $15 million, each for the next five years to help them become smart. The grant would be matched by the local government that governs the city. Even so, these are paltry funds. PM Modi hopes that after the government intervention, private companies will invest in the revolution.

If PM Modi is indeed serious about an overhaul of Indian cities, he would be undertaking one of the greatest humanitarian tasks in the world. As things stand, all Indian cities are broken even by the standards of the developing world. They are hellholes for the poor and insufferable for the rich.

More than 30 per cent of India lives in urban areas, not counting the floating population, and the figure is expected to rise steeply in the near future. The migration from rural areas holds much hope for India. The shrinking of the traditional Indian village might be a loss to heritage, but it is a heritage from which many of India's ills emerge. Some city dwellers may have romantic notions about the village, but it is a treacherous place for the poor.

The nature of a city makes it harder, if not impossible, for the powerful to get away with criminal conduct against those deemed to be of lower castes. Their children have reasonable opportunities in the city. Women have greater freedom and safety. These are the reasons, apart from the money, the rustic poor become urban poor and choose to live in inhuman conditions.

Politicians have not been able to improve the lives of the urban poor, because they did not become politicians by being humanitarians with bright ideas. In any case, most of the migrant poor do not vote in the cities. They go back to their villages to vote after receiving their little bribes. Also, urban politicians have been lousy builders of good infrastructure, because, apart from lacking the will and the wisdom, they fear that voters will view swanky projects as toys of the rich.

There is some basis for this fear. For instance, four years ago, on the first day of a street demonstration in Delhi that would soon become a middle-class movement against corruption, there were only the poor shouting slogans, and what they were saying was that the government was just building "wide highways" and "airports" for the rich. The politicians who backed the Delhi Metro project, too, faced similar criticism at the start — that they were building trains with air-conditioning and automatic doors for the rich.

PM Modi, too, has faced criticism that his "smart cities" would amount to shimmering business districts for billionaires. Though he has toned down the shimmering bit, he has been struggling to convey the difficult message to Indians that the rising tides of modern glittering cities would lift all smart boats.